Netflix escapes: Ciudad Axila, #1

By Daruma Neko

Life in Hellhole City – acronym for airport, HHC − moves very fast: if you don't keep up, you're lost.
Buildings are sustainable and corruption is widespread.
Hellhole City is a deranged and dirty megacity, very dirty −with billions of noxious particles floating in suspension− where the motto is 'run or die' and where more Japanese terms are used than Anglicisms.
The social gap is an abyss: the very rich live in housing developments with more restricted access than Area 51.
In a world that is dying of thirst, they can afford to water gardens like soccer fields.
Life in Hellhole City is certainly no Capra movie.
In HHC nothing is what it seems: everything is simulation. That is why, in this first installment of the trilogy, vice, artificiality and deceit reign. It is a story of betrayal and lies, but also a dizzying adventure that will leave you breathless.
Netflix, the protagonist, will be caught up in a plot against him, he will parkour on the rooftops, experience the heartbreak of disloyalty, meet the tough and enigmatic Toxina and, above all, get high like there's no tomorrow.
Maybe, after all, there isn't.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Pallol
• Release date: Oct 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201334543

Daruma Neko

Su nombre es japonés. 'Daruma' significa 'demonio' y neko, 'gato'. Es un gato-demonio. O un demonio de gato. Nuestro autor transespecista es un superviviente de Fukushima. Un gato radiactivo, fluorescente en la oscuridad. También desarrolló facultades humanas, como la de hablar o la de teclear con los pulgares. Y notó de repente unas dotes visionarias, de ahí que se animara a escribir para iPulp thrillers trepidantes con humor, romance, aventura y corrupción generalizada, que es lo que el público parece demandar estos días.  Si ya los gatos son sabios, imagina uno mutante. Para Daruma el futuro es como un libro abierto. 

Book preview

1st BOOK FROM THE HELLHOLE CITY TRILOGY:

NETFLIX ESCAPES

Translation into English: Vera Violeta

Revised and corrected by Karen Gutierrez

F rantic restlessness in need of happy quietness. Vicious, voracious existence.

Isabella Santacroce, Destroy.

11:11 h. Day 1.

Netflix stretched out in bed tossing and turning while bellowing like a moose in heat. He got out of bed shortly thereafter and walked into the kitchen, to make himself a coffee powered by concentrated extract of cathine: the super-coffee. He also snorted a couple of speed lines. With the spirits high, he began to hum: ‘Start the day full of energy...’ That was his recipe to wake up in a happy mood and face whatever that may come across. ‘Shock treatment, it does wonders on me.’

Holding the cup of powered coffee in his hand, Netflix took a second to hit the house-monitoring app in his electronic device. Water began to heat up for the shower. The windows electro-chromatic panes turned from opaque to transparent. Netflix, with nothing on but his underwear and yawning, cast a glance outside. The same usual landscape unfolded before his eyes. So familiar. So depressing. So sleazy. White noise. Pink noise. Interferences in electromagnetic fields. Distortion. Static. Couplings. The city was also starting to wake up at that uncertain time of the morning, with the soundtrack of a junk yard.

What are we talking about anyway?

Welcome to Hellhole City, with a population of 43 million people —it is only a rough figure: the census does not include the massive incoming waves of climate refugees —. Hellhole City, also known as Action Town: the megalopolis where life becomes a spasm and history, a blink. They are always saying Hellhole City is about to explode. They have been saying that for eons. Well, there it was, shiny and in one piece. It was a true survivor, like Netflix. It was also true that Hellhole City honored its name: it was a cess pool, indeed. The only law fulfilled there was that of gravity, and sometimes not even that. Netflix couldn’t help but twist his face in a wry grimace as he was looking outside. Yep, Hellhole City wasn’t anything else but a monster open-air sewer, he reckoned; but part of that town, no matter how hideous it was, belonged to him. And he was rich thanks to it.

It had not been a piece of cake, that is for sure. As it was not easy to maintain his position. But Netflix could not complain so far. He was doing quite well.

The city center was ruled by a couple of Chinese families, but the suburbs were something else: there was room for everybody. The endless sprawling area was basically divided into four different crime realms, each one dominated by a different boss. DJ Inferno was king of the west. The gritty Lady Poppaea was the master and mistress of the north. Mister XTC, of gender fluid —or with a lot of flow, like they used to say— was sovereign of the east. Last but not least, the entire south belonged to our very own Netflix: no-one moved there a finger, still attached to the hand or amputated, without him knowing.

Besides, each one of these lords and dames of the underworld dominated a thriving monopoly. DJ Inferno, that of drinking dens and nightclubs. Netflix, mainly that of water. Mr XTC — and their name already gave a clue about it —, that of synthetic drugs. Lady Poppaea, lastly, those of organ trafficking and trade in enriched uranium, frozen embryos, and other tempting trifles in the illegal bazaar.

What reminded Netflix he had a couple of pending issues. The more select country clubs in the metropolitan area have asked him for a water supply to irrigate their golf courses. He mentally gloated: there was a good business there, no doubt. He wanted to close the deal that very same day. Prior to anything, he had to meet with Lenox, so he grabbed the electronic device that was closest to hand and texted him through WeChat. Lenox did not take long to text back: he would be there in half an hour.

Once confirmed his visit, Netflix got into the bathroom and took a shower. He slacked off under the comforting hot stream for a long time. Legally, like everybody else, he was entitled to three minutes, but he was by no means the only one that manipulated the timer. Besides, he did not have to worry about the water he consumed: a privilege of trafficking with it. Water was a rare and highly priced commodity these days. There were strict rules against misusing it. Some depraved millionaire octogenarians organized orgies in their hot-tubs, but they were the exception. It is every citizen’s duty to save water, the government kept saying through TV commercials and institutional spam. Netflix recalled, under the stream of hot water, how he was taught to make a rational use of it from an early age. They started at the nursery school: as soon as you arrived there in the mornings, be it winter or summer, they made you strip and find a place under the shower heads. The teacher would stand by the door of the white-tiled room and, before turning the tap, shouted:

Now kids, repeat after me!

And all the kids — including baby Netflix — said as one and loud and clear:

One minute to get wet, another minute to soap up and one last minute to rinse! Three minutes are enough for a good shower!

Very well, children! the teacher would congratulate them and then turned the faucet and water fell.

The race against time began among all these small children without having too much notion of what a minute really was, feeling insecure, acting in a clumsy way... Time and again the shower gel or the bar of soap would slip off their hands. Many of them — little Netflix among them — had still a big deal of lather all over their bodies when the teacher, after measuring the time rigorously, turned off the tap. It was a proper mess.

One learned to master the technique over the years. You could even manage to enjoy some spare time... A few seconds, fair enough all the same to claim that the awkward rush and the burdens already belonged to childhood. Netflix, when he reminisced about those magical years, smiled nostalgically. His time in the shower then was measured by mom at home or the teacher at school. Now all the domestic apps featured a pre-set timer for the shower: only three minutes. Not a second else. Anyway, a few people took a shower. It was a waste and a luxury. Hygiene was becoming again a rich people’s habit.

Netflix was one of them. That is why, contrary to the majority, he could afford having a daily shower. Even two sometimes, in a provocative gesture close to the obscene. Money allowed him to have other features unthinkable for the rest, like owning a large ground around the house with a garden. Moreover, it was a lush garden strewn with trees, bushes, and flower beds that he watered daily; other people for much less than this had been tagged ‘antisocial’. Of course, all these considerations to Netflix were the same load of crap. He was too busy struggling to survive to think about the good or evil of his deeds.

Beyond his garden trees and plants, one could guess the hostile forms, the toxic spills, the metal screeches. Netflix thought of his domains, a degenerate district with the lowest life standards, but his district after all. And he had grown to love it.

In the same way he loved money. Nothing rhymed better.

Arms trafficking and the undercover bingo halls have made him rich, but not as much as all those water kegs he stored in his warehouses. Thousands of them, full of liquid gold. If he wanted so, he thought, he could bring any Middle East country to its knees.

11:42 h. Day 1.

Netflix left the shower, put on a thermal fiber bathrobe, and went